Editorial: Should Bend add e-scooters to its e-bike bike share program? Or stay scooter shy?

For scooter despisers, e-scooters violate the sanctity of the sidewalk. Scooters are just a new thing to be flung into the Deschutes River and a menace to pedestrians and drivers.

Well scooter despisers, scooter lovers and those enjoying scooter ambivalence, the city of Bend may add e-scooter share to the official, city-supported mobility arsenal alongside bike share. The city is going to think about it.

A scooter share program is not about to launch in Bend. The city does plan to look at e-scooters along with adaptable bikes — trikes for people who have trouble with two-wheeled machinery.

“The focus will continue to be on e-bikes, pedal-assist e-bikes,” Tobias Marx, the city of Bend’s parking services division manager, said recently. “We hope that over the next couple years we will be able to evaluate other devices like scooters, adaptable bikes and then propose a way — or test a way for how those can be used successfully in a city like Bend. But we do not have plans to bring those devices at all. For now.”

Bike share works. The city contracted in 2022 with Bird Bikes for an e-bike bike share program. Is it time to think about scooter share?

In the summer in Bend, you could have a stall in the south Mirror Pond parking lot and almost rent bikes as fast as you could provide them. Ridership in the bike share program, though, has notably dropped. There were 25,706 rides in 2022, 15,477 in 2023 and 11,304 in 2025.

Several things happened. Operators had problems. They weren’t swiftly reshuffling bikes from where they were to where the city knows, through tracking, they should be. Many fewer bikes were deployed in 2024. There were 120 on average in 2022, 218 in 2023 and 93 in 2024.

Another noticeable change was the number of public complaints about the city’s bikes. It was 250 in 2022 and down to 29 in 2024. That is encouraging, if the city could match that level of performance with scooters. The reason for the drop in complaints could have been that people became more used to bike share bikes. There were fewer bikes. Most importantly, perhaps, the city stepped up efforts to track bike locations and contact operators when bikes were left where they shouldn’t be.

The city started talking about scooters in 2019, saying they might come in 2020. They did not. The city was scooter shy. Where scooters have been deployed elsewhere, there has been successes and complaints and problems. They are left where they shouldn’t be left. They are ridden like they shouldn’t be ridden. And anything new can be hard to adjust to.

Like e-bikes, e-scooters can be a great way to cut down on car trips. They can be convenient. Find one, pay, get on and go. They can ease some congestion. They can be better for the environment. They can be fun.

It’s not e-scooters that are the problem, after all. It’s how they are used.

City officials may decide they don’t want to even try. Why invite the work, the bumps in the transition, the potential headaches? The city doesn’t need to embrace every new gizmo.

But is it fair that only bikes get official sanction for city-supported mobility? Why not let people decide if they want the option?

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